


In The Flesh

by commoncomitatus



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 7 [5]
Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: Gen, Other: See Story Notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 07:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8003290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Extension of the campfire scene in "Sacrifice II".  Callisto spends some quality time with the 'irritating blonde', and shares a few painful truths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Flesh

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Hurt/Comfort Bingo](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com) Round 7.  
> Prompt: Knife Wounds / Lacerations
> 
>  **Warning:** This fic includes discussion of suicide, repeated invasion of personal space, and threats of violence and death, all through the lens of a character who romanticises them. Basically, Callisto's mind is a dark and disturbing place, and this fic explores that in detail. Proceed with caution if this sort of thing affects you.

—

There’s always a knife.

It’s kind of funny, when you think about it. She’s always had a flair for the dramatic, for fire and brimstone and flashiness, anything to emulate the violence that ravaged her life she was a child. If it has to be a blade she prefers the sword, ideally something long and and serrated. Sharpness optional, of course; you can have a lot of fun with a dull edge, and a lot more with a rusty one. She likes leaving scars, jagged and messy and ugly things, twisted like she is, a memory of the deed like her name carved into someone else’s skin.

She’s not really picky about the details; it’s the drama that speaks to her.

Knives, daggers, delicate little things like that… they’re too small. As deadly weapons go, they’re practically quaint. Adorable, in a murderous sort of way. Holding one, it almost doesn’t feel like a weapon at all. More like a toy, a child’s plaything.

Callisto doesn’t really remember being a child. She definitely doesn’t remember having playthings. The things she does remember aren’t like that at all. She remembers being left alone, and she remembers being hungry. Not for the food she couldn’t find, oh no, but for something much taster. She remembers slavering for justice and vengeance, remembers the first flickers of violence and bloodlust igniting in her belly. It consumed her, devoured her, wrung out every last shred of innocence until even just the idea of it became a blur.

Fitting, in a way, that a knife was the first weapon she taught herself to use. It was an inelegant thing, and ungraceful, but oh so wonderfully efficient; it might not be her weapon of choice, even now, but it has its uses.

It’s fitting too, in a sad-ironic-funny sort of way, that it’s the one she always finds herself pressing against Gabrielle’s pretty little throat. They’re both delicate things, Gabrielle and the knife, and they both get her what she wants in the end.

It’s an interesting change of pace. When she goes up against Xena, it’s all flashing steel and conflagration, godly powers or hurled chakrams, whatever she can find that makes the most noise. She wants Xena to remember her name, to not be able to look away when one or the other of them dies. It’s not happened yet, but… well, they’re close enough to the hind’s blood dagger now that she finds herself almost hopeful.

She hasn’t felt that in a very long time, she realises. _Hope_ , the kind that didn’t spawn from a god and a goody two-shoes.

And speaking of the goody two-shoes… she has no idea that her throat is just a hair’s breadth away from another knife. She’s lying in her bedroll, facing away from her, and it’s nothing short of adorable that she genuinely thinks Callisto believes she’s asleep. Granted, they’re not really friends, and it’s not like Gabrielle spends a lot time in the company of gods — not that Callisto’s aware of, anyway, though she supposes Hope must have been conceived somehow — but you’d think Xena would have taken the time to teach the silly girl _something_.

That said, apparently Xena’s having an off-day too. She must be; she didn’t even notice when the knife went missing.

Callisto doesn’t have much use for traditional weaponry these days, the dramatic or the quaint. She keeps them around, of course — well, why break the habit of a lifetime? — but they feel so silly and mortal now that she’s got better options. She has all the elements at her fingertips now, and a whole lot more besides, and she’s not shy about using them all. Fire is her favourite, of course, and she thoroughly enjoys playing with it in front of Xena, but they all have their uses and she’s had more fun than ever care to admit learning to master her new powers.

The knife, the one she’s playing with now, is one of Xena’s. There’s an irony there, which just makes it all the more tempting to draw the thing across Gabrielle’s throat while she can. Callisto slipped it out of Xena’s boot when she wasn’t looking, just to make a point. Not that Xena bothered to notice.

Itching as she always is for a fight, she was hoping she’d get huffy about it. She was looking forward to the confrontation, the challenge, the sparks and the insults flying like pyrotechnics. No doubt there’d be some smug, self-righteousness thrown in there too, _‘you’ll follow my rules’_ or something of the sort, some Xena-like braggartry to remind everyone that she’s in charge. Callisto waited for it with bated breath, but it never came. Xena didn’t do anything at all; she didn’t even see it happen.

Frankly, it’s a little insulting. Not so long ago, she would have killed her for it. Now, preoccupied by who knows what, she just stalks off into the forest and leaves Callisto alone with her precious Gabrielle. Like she’s not afraid of her. Like Callisto isn’t a freaking _god_. Like she couldn’t gut the little blonde with a thought if she wanted to.

She does want to. Quite desperately, as it happens. But she won’t. She doesn’t want Xena to get all moody about it, and renege on their little deal out of spite.

Besides, it’s not like she’s here to see it. It’s just the two of them, just her and Gabrielle, and though it’s not quite so much fun without Xena there to glare and shout and make a scene, Callisto has never been able to pass up a chance to torment the girl a little. She’s just so delightfully _easy_.

“So how does it feel?”

Gabrielle doesn’t answer. She’s making a grand show of the fake-sleep thing, but Callisto has senses she can’t even fathom and she feels every nerve in her body light up. How sweet, that she thinks she can hide anything.

Callisto chuckles, lets her know that she’s not fooling her, and clarifies. “Knowing that Xena’s death will be all your fault, I mean.”

Gabrielle still doesn’t move, but her breathing gets harsh in her chest. Callisto smiles, relishing the feel of it in her keen god-senses, and threads the blade lazily between her fingers. Gabrielle won’t see the show, of course, but she doesn’t care. None of this is for her benefit, after all.

“Not feeling chatty?” she presses. “Strange. Usually it takes an army to make you shut up. Now, not even a peep. Don’t tell me Xena finally taught you some self-respect.”

Gabrielle tenses. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

 _Well._ Callisto lets her smile sharpen. _That’s a start_.

“If you’re looking for ice-breakers,” she says, just as cool and sweet as anything, “you could start by telling me where your beloved Xena’s hiding that hind’s blood dagger. Believe me, it’d save us all a lot of bother.”

“I’m sure it would,” Gabrielle says. There’s a hollow deadness to her voice, like there was the night she tried to kill Callisto, after she’d slaughtered that little boy she called a husband. Callisto relished the deadness then; now it just bores her. “But I’m not telling you.”

Callisto shrugs. Disappointing, but it’s nothing less than she expected.

“You’ve not changed much,” she observes sadly. “You’re the same stupid, stubborn, irritating little girl you were when we first met.” It’s not true — she doesn’t need to be a god to see that — but she knows the insult will cut, and she really enjoys that. “I could’ve killed you with just a flick of my wrist back then. One little cut, and you would’ve been bleeding out all over the floor. Would your last word have been ‘Xena’?”

“No,” Gabrielle says.

Callisto doesn’t believe her. Then again, it’s pretty obvious that Gabrielle doesn’t believe it either, so why point it out?

“I’m sure she’ll be crushed to hear that,” she says instead, humouring her. “Do you think her last word will be ‘Gabrielle’? You know, when she dies tomorrow?”

“I hope not,” Gabrielle whispers.

She doesn’t move at all, but Callisto can hear her heartbeat quickening, and it’s music to her ears.

“I bet you wish I’d done it,” she goes on. “Finished you off the first time we met. Would’ve saved everyone a lot of trouble, don’t you think?”

Gabrielle sucks in her breath, rough and ragged. “No.”

“Oh, come on.” She laughs, more to make the point than out of any real mirth. “You can’t fool me. I know you think about it sometimes. When you look back on all the pain I put you through since then, not to mention all the pain _you_ put Xena through…” The thought makes her wince, struck by a vision of Hope with Ares; a disgusting lack of self-control, if anyone asks her. “You expect me to believe you never once wondered if the world wouldn’t be better off if I’d just put you out of your misery way back then?”

Finally, Gabrielle does turn around. The look on her face, guilt and grief and hatred, gives Callisto more pleasure than she’s felt in a very long time. She levitates the knife between her hands, smiling when Gabrielle stares, and idly wonders if she’s more afraid of her goddess’s powers or the cruel, keen blade.

She doesn’t need to wonder for long; the answer is right there in those big green eyes. She can see everything in there, can read what Gabrielle’s thinking, can feel what she’s feeling. Maybe if it was Xena asking the question instead of Callisto, or that bumbling fool Joxer, she might even admit it. But it’s not them; it’s _her_ , and they both know Gabrielle would never give Callisto the satisfaction of seeing her weak. Not when she’s the one who made her that way in the first place.

Admittedly, Callisto’s rather proud of that. She’ll never be able to hurt Xena the way Xena hurt her, but it’s almost as satisfying to hurt her innocent little friend instead, to bleed that innocence out of her, little by little, until she’s as broken and twisted as she is.

Oh, what she wouldn’t give to see Xena’s face when that happens. Such a shame that neither one of them will be around to see it.

Gabrielle’s silence lasts about a minute. Then, slowly and very carefully, she sits up in her bedroll, looks Callisto right in the eye, and says, “ _Yes_.”

Callisto blinks. It’s been a long, long time since she felt anything like genuine surprise, but she can’t deny this has a very similar effect.

“Well, well,” she manages, not bothering to mask it. “Did you really just admit to being less than perfect?”

“Yes,” Gabrielle says again, steadier this time. She looks very sad, but also a little angry. Callisto wonders if she’s further down the path to broken and twisted than she first thought. “I’m not perfect, Callisto. I never claimed to be. And you’re right: I do think about it sometimes. How different the world would be if you’d just killed me the first time we met.” She trails off, shaking her head. “Everything would be so much simpler. You would’ve got your revenge, maybe you would’ve found some peace as well. Perdicus would still be alive, and so would Solan. And the gods know, the world would be a safer place if I’d never had…”

Callisto laughs. “ _Hope_?” The emphasis is deliberate, making it a noun instead of a name. “A little dramatic, wouldn’t you say?”

“You know what I mean.” Gabrielle is flushing in the dark, and if Callisto didn’t know better she’d swear the irritating little blonde was baring her teeth. “My daughter.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Dahak’s pride and joy.” She bares her teeth too, a sharp, malicious smile to match Gabrielle’s anger and pain. “How did that happen, by the way?”

It’s a genuine question, though it lacks any real conviction. Callisto has no idea how Gabrielle of all people got mixed up in Dahak’s business, but she also doesn’t particularly care. As long as it ended in misery for Xena and her little friend, it doesn’t matter one way or another how he coerced or forced her into carrying his twisted offspring. Callisto doesn’t care what happened or why, but asking the question makes Gabrielle look at her like she just ran her through with something keener than a knife, and that gives her more satisfaction than any answer she can imagine.

After a long moment, surprising her again, Gabrielle says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Well, that’s impressive. Callisto expected _‘it’s none of your business’_ or some mumbled insult or another. Whatever the details might be, it doesn’t take an immortal to recognise that it’s personal and private, and Callisto was all but ready to be told to keep her nose out of it. This… well, it’s positively _chatty_.

There’s something almost like a confession in the way she says it, the way she looks at Callisto like she’s not afraid of her or angry at her or very much of anything at alll. Like maybe she doesn’t hate her quite as much as she used to. What terrible things she must have seen or done, that her most hated enemy has become just another fireside companion.

It’s sort of a shame, quite honestly. Callisto rather enjoyed being the Xena to someone else’s heartbroken little girl. She relished the way Gabrielle used to look at her, the way Callisto made her re-live every horrible thing she’d ever been through, the way she saw in her everything Callisto still sees in Xena. It was a nice feeling, like someone else understood, and though she knows Gabrielle would never admit it still Callisto felt a kind of kinship with the silly girl.

She remembers mentioning it to Xena, somewhere between Perdicus’s death and her own. Gabrielle was tied to a stake, ready to be burned like the little witch she is, and Callisto couldn’t help pointing out the similarities between the them. _“I wonder if I could’ve been her,”_ she mused out loud, and basked in the sick horror on both their faces.

Experience has taught her that’s never going to happen. Even if she hadn’t died and become immortal, she lost her chance at redemption years ago; frankly, figuring that out was a burden off her shoulders, not another one added. She doesn’t want to be the sweet innocent thing she saw back then in Gabrielle; she knows too well how far it is to fall from a pedestal that high. No, no, no; it’s much safer to stay on the ground, slithering on your belly like a snake.

And isn’t it so much more exciting to wonder instead if _Gabrielle_ could be _her_?

The last time they met, she would have said ‘no’. Hope was but a babe back then, and Callisto remembers how easy it was for the kid to manipulate Gabrielle into thinking and feeling and doing what she wanted. Gabrielle was more of a child than her own daughter, a fool and a blithe, naïve idealist.

That idealism cost Xena her son, and for a short time it cost Gabrielle her daughter as well. Callisto still finds it hard to believe that the sweet little blonde did the deed herself.

There’s hope for her yet, she decides, and smiles.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” she asks, cool and conversational, like they’re the very best of friends. “Knowing that you did to Xena the very same thing she did to me.”

Gabrielle stiffens where she sits, but she doesn’t say anything. Not that Callisto really expected her to. That blithe idealism of hers isn’t just for show, after all; it’s a defence mechanism, a way of hiding from the truth. She won’t accept where this little adventure is heading until she sees it for herself, until she’s huddled over Xena’s lifeless corpse, crying for her like she did for her silly little husband. That moment is going to be such an ugly, beautiful thing; Callisto can’t wait to see it.

After a few long moments, Gabrielle drops back onto her bedroll and turns away, rolling onto her side and showing Callisto her back. She’s thrown the blanket off now, and Callisto studies her spine as it curves, shifting under the fabric of that hideous shirt. She counts the vertebrae, and has to swallow down the urge to shatter them one by one.

As though sensing the violence rising in her, Gabrielle twitches. She wraps her arms around herself, back suddenly bowed as though in self-defence, like she can somehow protect herself by imagining Callisto isn’t there, making believe that she’s safe and alone, or else in Xena’s arms doing whatever it is that ‘best friends’ do these days.

It’s cute, in a deluded sort of way, that she thinks she gets any say in when this conversation is going, and Callisto graciously allows her a few moments to cling to the idea. It’s not much, just enough that she might really start to believe it’s over. Then, in a flash that’s more for show than anything else, she snaps her fingers and materialises in her bedroll, pressing in tight against her back.

There’s no space between them at all, just as she intended. Gabrielle still doesn’t turn around, but she goes tight as a whip. This close, Callisto can feel every muscle in her lithe little body, and of course she responds by throwing an arm over her waist, pressing up against her with every part of her own body, letting her know beyond any shadow of doubt that there’s no escape from this, from her, from the truth.

“My word, isn’t this cozy?”

She lets her hand rest on Gabrielle’s stomach, and tries to imagine how it looked and felt when she was pregnant with Hope, swollen and distended and unnatural. She wonders if she suffered, and hopes that Xena did too, watching as her ‘best friend’ grew big with someone else’s child. She imagines Gabrielle screaming through the labour, her face a rictus of torture, and Dahak standing by like a proud father-to-be.

No doubt the truth would disappoint after such a pretty picture, and so she doesn’t ask for the details. She splays her fingers across those tight abdominal muscles, and presses down hard.

“What are you doing?” Gabrielle asks. Her voice is higher than normal, but not with fear. She’s grown up too much over the last year to be afraid of her now, or else maybe she never was. She always seemed more defiant than frightened, even as an innocent little girl. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Why, because it’s fun, of course.” She says it like it’s obvious, which by this point in their relationship it really should be. “Xena doesn’t respond to me like you do. Most of the time she just ignores me. But _you_ …” She smiles, wolfish and mocking, and lets Gabrielle feel her teeth, sharp against the skin of her shoulder. “I don’t think you’re capable of that.”

She’s right. She knows it because Gabrielle tenses even more.

To her credit, she doesn’t try to pull away. That’s something, though it’s honestly a bit disappointing too. Callisto would let her go, of course, because making her flee would be a victory in itself, but Gabrielle doesn’t know that. She probably thinks it would be futile, and so she doesn’t bother.

That, or maybe she’s just enjoying the intimacy. Secretly, silently, in that sinful place she doesn’t want to admit exists. She can’t see Callisto’s face from this position, so maybe she’s letting herself pretend it’s Xena. It wouldn’t be the first time she wore this body, after all.

Well, if that’s what she’s doing, Callisto will take great pleasure in shattering that little delusion too.

“You know,” she says, playful and coy, “I’ve seen you naked.”

Gabrielle shivers. Her stomach churns; Callisto can feel it under her palm. “What are you talking about?”

Callisto laughs, lets Gabrielle feel the heat of it against her neck. “Well. Not _you_ , exactly…”

Gabrielle sighs against her. The tension in her body is delicious; Callisto could spend the rest of her immortal life like this, just feeling her flinch and cringe. “You mean Hope.”

“Oh, yes.” Callisto bites her shoulder again, smiles at the stifled whimper. “Quite the resemblance, wouldn’t you say?”

She’s still got the knife in her other hand, the one not pressing down on Gabrielle’s stomach. She brings it up slowly, touches the point to the place where that ugly green shirt meets Gabrielle’s spine. It’s a delicate touch, light and tickling and incredibly careful. She won’t break the skin unless Gabrielle tries to move; it’s more fun when the pain is all her fault.

“Stop that,” Gabrielle says. She’s still not afraid, more’s the pity. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but it won’t work.”

Callisto ignores that, pressing on as though nothing is happening at all.

“I suppose that means Ares has seen you naked too,” she muses, pretending to be talking to herself. “You know, with the way he and your daughter are rolling around like cats in heat. Do you suppose he’s counted her birthmarks?”

“Don’t…”

“Oh, I quite agree, it’s a disgusting idea. No self-control, either of them.” She sighs, exaggerated and melodramatic. “I suppose that’s one way you two are different, hm? She’ll open herself up for anyone, but you… well, you’re like a _rock_.”

That’s a lie, and a deliberate one. Callisto can feel the tremors under her skin, the quaking in her bones; her heightened god senses are good at that sort of thing. Gabrielle might think she’s being stoic like Xena, but her body gives her away; she’s as far from a rock as anyone can get.

Callisto won’t tell her she knows that, though. It’s more fun when it’s her little secret, hidden away like the parts of her she saw on Hope, the birthmarks she might have counted too.

She slides the knife down over Gabrielle’s back, counting out the vertebrae again, this time with the blade. She could cut straight through, if she wanted, but she knows that Xena would never put her out of her misery if she did such a thing. She would condemn her to live in this torturous purgatory forever, and call it a ‘fair punishment’. A cruel twist of fate, but fitting, Callisto supposes. In her own way, Xena is as idealistic, or at least as stupidly naïve as Gabrielle.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Gabrielle says.

She shifts just slightly, as though daring Callisto to break the skin. Callisto doesn’t, but it’s tempting. A little nick here, a little slice there; she wouldn’t even need to do any real damage, just let her know that she’s capable of it.

But no, that’s a game for another time. She’ll have her fun with Gabrielle’s skin if Xena doesn’t uphold her end of their bargain. For now, she’ll just play a different game.

“Were you ever?” she asks. “I mean, _really_ afraid?”

Gabrielle shifts again, not challenging this time, only thinking. Callisto, feeling generous, lets her do that for a few moments unhindered. She drags the knife down a little, turns it so it’s only the handle touching her. A gesture of good faith, perhaps, or a kind of give and take. It’s nice, having an actual conversation for once, with someone who has more to say than _‘you’re a monster’_.

“No,” Gabrielle says, at long last. “No, I don’t think I ever was.”

“I don’t think so either,” Callisto admits with a sigh. “You always had so much faith in your precious Xena. You refused to believe anyone could ever hurt you, always assuming she’d be there, riding in on her white horse to save the day.” She closes her eyes for a moment, lets her mind flood with the smell of fire and the taste of blood. “Do you think she’d still do that now? Even after what you did to her little son?”

Gabrielle doesn’t say _‘it wasn’t me’_ like Callisto expects her to. She doesn’t blame Hope for Solan’s murder, or Callisto, or anyone else. She just sighs.

“I know she would,” she says, like it’s the saddest thing in the world.

Callisto snorts. “It must be nice,” she muses. “Having that kind of faith.”

“Sometimes it is,” Gabrielle says softly. “And sometimes it’s not.”

Callisto can’t help herself. She’s genuinely intrigued. “Oh?”

Gabrielle sighs again, more tired than heavy, then sits up and turns to face her. Callisto sits up too, letting her hands drop to her side and tapping the flat of the knife against her thigh in a wordless encouragement to continue. _You have my attention,_ she says with her body language. _Use it well._

Gabrielle studies her very hard for a couple of minutes, like she’s trying to figure out whether she’s serious or just trying to bait her. Callisto doesn’t give anything away; she’ll let the little blonde draw her own conclusions, right or wrong, without any help. Either way, she’s got an actual conversation going now, and that’s much more fun than talking to a hollow void.

After a long, weighted silence, Gabrielle takes a deep breath, like she’s summoning the explanation from some place deep inside herself. Callisto could frankly do without the overblown dramatics, but she’ll take what she gets because the alternative — for both of them — is sitting there in awkward silence and waiting for Xena to come back.

“You…” Her voice cracks; Callisto quirks a bemused eyebrow, but doesn’t laugh. Gabrielle looks away, then tries again. “You once told me to think back to when I was a little girl.”

Her words are very heavy, like it takes a great effort to get them all out, and Callisto gives them the weight they deserve.

She recalls the conversation, certainly, but it’s all kind of vague and hazy in her head, a distant echo like most things are these days. Her whole life feels that way, like every moment is as vast as the universe, and she’s just a tiny little dot in the middle. She remembers the experiences that shaped her, but with only a few exceptions the details have grown blurry and smudged with time, like parts of her life have been erased and rewritten and erased again until it’s all but illegible.

It’s a challenge sometimes to know which parts of her memory she can trust, which parts of herself are the real ones, but of course she’s not about to let Gabrielle know any of that. She just shrugs, nods, and gestures with the knife.

“Go on.”

Gabrielle swallows a little, then does. “You told me to remember how it felt when my whole world revolved around my mother and my sister. And then you said to kill them.”

Now Callisto does remember. Vividly, viscerally, deliciously. She treated Gabrielle so cruelly that night, and she loved every second of it.

“You wanted to know if I felt anything,” she recalls out loud. “Oh yes, I remember that very well. You were trying to figure me out or something similarly sentimental. I think you thought we could be friends.”

“No, I didn’t.” Gabrielle’s voice is hard now, angry, but she doesn’t let Callisto sway her from whatever silly point she’s trying to make. “But that’s not important. I’m talking about that feeling. That moment when you lose everything you ever put your faith in. And you…” 

She closes her eyes; Callisto counts her lashes. They’re very pretty, but the sight of them makes her think of Hope.

“Spit it out, dear,” she says, to distract herself. “We don’t have all night, you know.”

Gabrielle’s jaw goes white, and her eyes fly open. She looks like she wants to argue, but she doesn’t.

“You had that taken away from you,” she says instead. “Your mother, your sister, your home. Xena… she took them all away, and there was nothing you could do. But imagine…”

Her voice is cracking again. It’s getting tiresome. Callisto flips the knife around and pokes her in the chest with the handle. “You’re not going to start crying, now, are you?”

“No.” She’s biting her lip, though. “Try to imagine how it would’ve felt if you were the one who did those things. If you were the one who killed your family and set that fire that ravaged your home and… and all of it. Not Xena. Not someone else. If you’d inflicted all that pain on yourself.”

Callisto tries. She really does. It’s more a kind of morbid fascination than any real desire to humour Gabrielle, but she does try. Nothing happens, though. Nothing at all.

It’s been so very long since she felt anything even vaguely resembling human emotion, she’s all but forgotten how to tap into the part of her that can imagine such things. She’s not even sure if that place even exists any more, or if it ever did; so much of her has been burned away, and not just by Xena. She’s a god now, so of course the whole issue is all academic, but still sometimes she can’t help wondering if there’s anything left of her humanity at all.

She doesn’t let Gabrielle see that either, though. Why disappoint the little thing when she’s trying so hard to be metaphorical and clever?

“All right,” she says instead, as though the whole endeavour isn’t completely futile. “What of it?”

“That’s how it feels,” Gabrielle explains. Her voice is steady again, but quiet. “Being responsible for Solan’s death, and for what happened in…” She cuts herself off before she can name the place, wherever it is, and ignores Callisto’s raised eyebrow. “It’s like… it’s like all of Xena’s faith revolved around _me_ , and I’m the one who killed it. I’m the one who burned it down and took it away and broke her heart, but she… she doesn’t, or she can’t, or she… she won’t stop feeling it anyway. Like a phantom limb or a loss she won’t accept.”

“Fascinating,” Callisto deadpans. “So if I cut your arm off, do you think she’ll feel it?”

“ _Callisto_.” The eyes are closed again, but only for a moment, and when she opens them again they’re rich with pain. “I’m trying to explain. Xena… she’ll never stop loving me or having faith in me. It doesn’t matter what I do or how much pain I cause, she’ll never—”

“Yes, yes, yes. The friendship of her life and all that sentimental nonsense.” Callisto rolls her eyes. The self-pity is making her sick. “You never stopped having faith in her either, and she’s done far worse. So forgive me if I fail to see the problem.”

“It’s different,” Gabrielle says patiently. “Xena’s deeds are in the past. Mine are in the present. It’s _now_. She’s going to confront my daughter tomorrow, and she’s going to kill her, and then the Fates are going to kill her too. She’s going to die for my mistakes, for the things I did to hurt her, and all because she won’t let go of her faith in me.” She doesn’t cry, but her voice is thick with tears; Callisto thinks she almost preferred the cracking. “It’s not fair.”

Callisto huffs a cynical laugh. _‘Not fair’_ is one of her favourite things, but she can’t fathom how this situation falls into that particular category. She knows injustice; this isn’t it.

“It seems perfectly fair to me,” she says, and revels in Gabrielle’s flinch. “I’d say it’s a fitting punishment, having to live with all that guilt. Knowing that you’re the reason she’s dead, that her death is all your fault. Going back to that hovel she calls a village and explaining to her mother that your daughter is the reason hers is dead…” She lets the smile fall off her face, lets herself get very, very serious. “It’s all I ever wanted.”

It’s true enough, if not exactly like this. Gabrielle’s misery is a pathetic second place after Xena’s. The image is a delightful one when it’s the warrior princess instead of the irritating sidekick; she would have given anything to see Xena live out the rest of her life crushed by the guilt of Gabrielle’s demise, wracked by the horrors of what she did, haunted every second of every day by visions of the lives she’s taken or ruined or both.

“I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” Gabrielle says, very softly.

Callisto laughs. “See, that’s your problem, Gabrielle. You’re too sweet. Too… _compassionate_.” It’s an insult, though she knows that Gabrielle won’t take it that way. She might as well be patting the stupid girl on the back for all the effect the words will have. “It’s kind of funny when you think about it. All that blood on your hands, and you still faint at the sight of it.” She holds out one of her own hands, the one still holding the knife. “I could help you with that, if you like.”

“I doubt it.” She’s trying so hard to sound cynical, but her eyes tell a very different story. She’s not looking at Callisto; she’s looking at the weapon. “Your definition of ‘help’ doesn’t really match with mine. Or anyone else’s.”

“Oh, but it’s so much _fun_ ,” Callisto coos. Not that she really needs to sell it; Gabrielle’s so stricken, so ripped apart by her own self-righteousness, she’d do almost anything to make herself feel better. “A little game, just the two of us. Xena wouldn’t understand, of course. She’s too _stoic_.”

Gabrielle shakes her head, but she’s not backing away. Callisto tests her a little, flips the knife around and presses the cold cruel edge to her throat. _Just like old times,_ she thinks, and just like then Gabrielle doesn’t flinch at all. Her body is completely still, like she’s already dead.

“You see?” Callisto finishes, smiling brightly. “Like a _rock_.”

Gabrielle’s face is fixed forwards, but her eyes are empty. Callisto has the knife tight against her throat, the edge jumping in rhythm with her pulse. It’s not the first time she’s caressed her neck with a blade like this; it seems to happen almost every time they cross paths, whether to make Xena squirm or just to test the girl’s own limits. Callisto simply adores the look on her face when she’s all helpless and vulnerable like this; she adores the sound of her breathing, catching and tensing in her chest, adores the way it feels against knife and her fingers. She loved it as a mortal, and she loves it all the more now, heightened as it is by her god’s senses.

She chuckles at the false stoicism, the desperation to be like Xena, then shakes her head. The knife slips again, deliberately, inching down from her throat to the curve of her shoulder, catching the frayed edge of her shirt. It’s a hideous thing, dirty green and in desperate need of mending; it wouldn’t take but a thought to slash the thing to ribbons and leave her exposed.

“It’s such a tragedy,” she says, letting her voice make it clear she means exactly the opposite. “So much blood on your hands. So much pain and anger and loss. So many _lives_ …”

“You’ve taken more lives than I have,” Gabrielle says, but her voice is shaking. Callisto tugs a little with the knife, testing, and Gabrielle still doesn’t resist as it catches a loose thread and pulls. “Countless more.”

“Oh, I don’t deny that.” Why would she? It’s the truth. She tugs a little more at the thread, feels it grow taut under the knife-edge, then severs it completely. “But that’s the difference between us, Gabrielle. I gave up on guilt a long time ago, and you’re still clinging to it like a child to a favourite toy. Do you really think it’ll protect you from your bad deeds? Do you think it’s protected Xena?”

“I…”

Callisto cuts through another thread, then turns the knife over. The point finds the hole she’s pulled through the fabric and hovers over it, a threat to the skin beneath.

“It won’t,” she says, flat and very serious. “It’ll just add up, heavier and heavier until you can’t carry it any more. Every drop of blood you’ve ever shed is hanging over you like a noose around your neck. How long, do you suppose, before it tightens?”

She punctuates the point by slipping the knife through the hole, the sharp pinprick of pain reflected on Gabrielle’s face as it pierces the skin. Reflex makes her body seize up, but her mouth has never learned that lesson.

“That’s the right thing to feel,” she squeaks. “It’s supposed to be a burden. It’s—”

“It’s _weakness_ ,” Callisto counters hotly. She closes her eyes and her vision floods once more with red. Fire for just a split-second and then blood, wet and warm and soaking the blade. She’s barely broken the skin at all, but she’s already thirsty for more. She wants to take everything this sweet little girl can give, every smile, every flicker of empathy, every emotion that might have once been hers. “Even your precious Xena would tell you that.”

Gabrielle pulls away. Callisto feels the knife catch in the skin, dragging sharply as she draws it back, and when it extricates itself from the ugly green fabric there’s a drop of deep crimson shining on the surface.

 _Yes,_ she thinks. _That’s it. I want Xena to know you bled for me._

Gabrielle blinks a little at the droplet, then shakes it off. “It’s not weakness to feel bad about bad deeds,” she says. “Xena knows it too. That’s why she’s trying to repent.”

“Yes, and with so much success. Applause all around.”

“Don’t.” Her voice is sharp for once. Not numb like it has been until now, and not blithely defiant like it was the last few times their paths crossed; for the first time, she actually sounds like a person in her own right, not just a yapping little puppy trailing along at Xena’s heels. “Don’t talk about her like that. You don’t understand. You’ll _never_ —”

“No, I don’t suppose I will.” She lets the thought comfort her, allows a somber smile. “After tomorrow, we’ll both be dead, Xena and I. So it doesn’t really matter who understands what, now, does it? Both of our journeys will end in the same place, and we both have you to thank for it. Doesn’t that just make you all warm and fuzzy inside?”

Under the dim cloudy moonlight, Gabrielle blanches the colour of sour milk. It’s not an attractive look on her.

“It’s not like that,” she chokes out, but the hideous pallor says she knows that it is. “It’s not like… I didn’t mean… it’s…”

“Yes, yes, I understand completely.” The sad thing is, she does; she just won’t ever say so. “It’s not your fault that your loveless daughter grew up a deranged megalomaniacal demigod with a hyperactive sex drive and a thirst for innocent blood. Sometimes these things just happen.”

“Callisto, _stop_.”

That’s a first. It’s not that Gabrielle has never said her name before; it’s just that she’s never said it to her face before in quite that way. There’s always a kind of spite in her, malice, like she’s spitting the name, like it’s poison on her tongue or venom on her lips, like if she says it exactly the right way she can drop her to the ground. It’s as futile as everything else she ever tried, of course, but Callisto always admired the effort to get under her skin, as if there’s anything left in there to irritate. Her name had never been worth much of anything to anyone before.

It’s not poison now, though, or a curse, and Gabrielle isn’t spitting it like she used to. There’s still a weight to it, still a kind of meaning, but it’s shifted somehow since the last time they sat together like this.

She’s talking to her now almost like they’re equals. Not friends, obviously, but at the very least two people who can communicate on a level with each other. Callisto has definitely never been talked to like that before. Not when she was a mortal and certainly not since she swallowed ambrosia. She was always a thing, an enemy or a prisoner or a madwoman, a beast to be beaten or a creature to be pitied. Even when she was human she was never a _person_.

They’re not quite there, but what she sees in Gabrielle now, what she hears in her voice, is as close to it as she can remember. Callisto isn’t her tormenter now, or her enemy or her rival, or even her husband’s murderer. Gabrielle isn’t telling her to stop because she doesn’t want to hear what Callisto has to say, or because she just wants her to ‘get it over with’ like she always did before. She’s not telling her to stop for fear of Xena’s wrath, or threatening to shut her up herself. In fact, she’s not telling her to stop at all. Adorable little naïf that she is, she’s _asking_.

Callisto does stop. Not because she cares, of course, but because she wants Gabrielle to take control for once. It’s fun, teasing and tormenting the girl, but more fun would be letting her be the one to reshape the conversation, to make it into something else. Idly curious, in a way that only a god can truly understand — immortal, with nothing but time on her hands and the world slowly circling below — she wants to know what Gabrielle is thinking.

She’s still got that little drop of blood on the knife, and that gives her the patience to hold her tongue. It’s a sweet kind of irony; she stole the knife from Xena, so that makes it Gabrielle’s bardic blood on Xena’s pretty little weapon. The thought makes her want to dance, makes her want to rush off into the forest and find her, wave the knife under her nose and say _‘guess who?’_.

She watches Gabrielle instead, shifting just a little to hold her urges in place. Gabrielle’s chest is heaving, no doubt some combination of anger and fear. There’s nothing suggestive in the moment — the silly blonde probably doesn’t even realise she’s doing it — but the sight ignites a memory, and suddenly all Callisto can think of is the way her breasts moved when Hope was the one wearing them.

After a long, quiet moment, Gabrielle reaches over and takes the knife from her. She studies the droplet, the way it colours the blade, but doesn’t move to clean it. She doesn’t comment on the way Callisto’s been turning it on her, the things she’s been threatening with and without words. For a moment or two, it seems like she won’t say or do anything at all.

Eventually, though, she breaks out of her trance. “This is Xena’s,” she says.

How very appropriate, Callisto thinks, that Xena’s little girlfriend would recognise one of her tools from a league away.

“Bravo,” she says drily. “And that shirt of yours has seen better days.” She gestures at the spot she pierced with the knife, the tiny hole in the fabric and the pinprick of pierced skin underneath. The fabric is too thick for the spot of blood to soak through, but Callisto knows it’s under there and that’s enough to make her smile. “Any other mind-blowing observations?”

“You’re a god,” Gabrielle says. Apparently she thought it was a serious question. “Why do you need a knife?”

“Call it a trophy,” Callisto says with a shrug. Of course, what she really means is, _‘call it whatever you want, I don’t really care’_ , but brevity is the soul of wit. “When Xena gets that hind’s blood dagger, she won’t have any use for quaint little toys like this one. Someone might as well get some use out of it.” Her smile sharpens, keen like the blade. “Then again, maybe I should give it to you instead, hm? If you’re really intent on making people suffer, there are more efficient ways than childbirth.”

Gabrielle opens her mouth, then shuts it again. A year ago she might have countered that, or made an attempt at it. Now, she just sighs and shakes off the point like a dog in the rain. It’s sad, really; Callisto was hoping for more.

“You like that,” Gabrielle muses after a moment or two. It’s not exactly mind-blowing, but at least it’s more of an observation than _‘you’re a god’_. Fractionally, at least. “You always pull a knife on me, or a dagger or… something like that. Every time you tried to use me to get to Xena. Never a sword, even though you had one. It was always a knife.”

“What can I say?” Callisto quips. “I appreciate the intimacy.”

It’s true. Maybe Gabrielle can sense that, because she makes a thoughtful, sound and then shrugs.

“You always had it against my throat,” she says quietly. Callisto remembers thinking about the same thing just a few minutes ago. “But you never used it.”

The point is a fair one. “It would’ve been too easy,” Callisto says. “You were just a squirming little girl. Not much more than a babe, really. Carving you up… it would’ve only made Xena angry. That wasn’t enough.”

Gabrielle frowns a little, like she’s pondering that, like she’s taking all this talk of violence seriously. She lifts the knife very slowly, until the blade is at a level with her face, and stares at the bead of her blood like she’s never seen the stuff before. That’s a preposterous notion, of course; Xena might be a little over-protective of the silly bard, but even she can’t be everywhere at once. In all the time they’ve travelled together, it’s absurd to think that Gabrielle never bled even once.

“It’s enough now,” she murmurs after a moment, running her fingertip along the edge. It doesn’t break the skin, but Callisto is surprised by how close it gets. “You want to do it now.”

Callisto swallows. She doesn’t need to, but she feels the words resonate in a place she didn’t even realise she still had. “Yes,” she admits, and wonders why it feels like a confession. “I’d love to just slit your throat right here and watch the life pour out of you. Can you imagine the look on Xena’s face when she gets back from her little ‘walk’ and finds your bloodless, lacerated corpse waiting for her?” She sighs because she knows she can’t do it, and slinks back to the question. “Yes, Gabrielle. It’s enough. Or it would be. If not for the hind’s blood dagger, you’d be dead right now.”

“So what changed?” Gabrielle asks. She doesn’t seem particularly affected by the fact that Callisto just admitted she wants to carve her up and delight in Xena’s grief. No, just like always, she’s far more interested in figuring out the motivation, the so-called story. “Is it because you’re going to die?”

“No,” Callisto says, sneering with brutal, bone-baring honesty. “It’s because you’re a worthless, snivelling coward who balks at the sight of blood and thinks death is something to be feared.”

She snatches the knife back. Not with her hands but with her mind, manoeuvring it with her godly powers to hang suspended on the air between them like a savage reminder. _See what I’m capable of,_ she’s saying. _Watch, and think of all the things I could do to you even without a weapon._

Gabrielle doesn’t watch, of course; she doesn’t even glance at the thing. Apparently she hasn’t changed much in that respect.

Even when it was held to her throat, she never looked at Callisto’s knives. Even during their embarrassing first clash, when Callisto used that idiot man-child Joxer to make a point, when Gabrielle was white and exhausted from hanging from a rope, when she was unsteady on her feet after they’d brought her down, still she wouldn’t look at it. Callisto teased her, taunted her, terrified her, but brave as she was the girl never once looked at the blade that might have ended her life. She closed her eyes, opened them again, stared at the ground or the sky, at Joxer or at Callisto herself; she would look at anything she could find, anything in the world, just to keep from looking at that.

It was different back then, though. She didn’t look at the knife then because she didn’t want to think about what it could do, what it _would_ do if Joxer only had the stomach to do as he was told. It was a sort of panic, a reflex that even she probably didn’t understand at the time. Now, years later, it’s become something else entirely. Callisto doesn’t need to ask to know that this time she knows perfectly well what a knife can do to a body. She doesn’t need to ask to know that Gabrielle has used one herself.

“It’s not like that,” she’s whispering, sounding ill. “It’s not cowardice to not want to see people hurt.”

Callisto bursts out laughing. It’s not the cruel, caustic chuckle she’s been using until now, but a kind of hysterical, wild roar, the way it gets sometimes when she feels her tenuous grasp on sanity start to slip, when the madness bubbling beneath the surface finds a way out through the cracks. That happens surprisingly often these days; you’d think being a god would free the mind from such mortal shackles as sanity, but apparently it’s quite the opposite, because she’s felt closer to crazy since she swallowed that ambrosia than she did even as a convicted sociopath. She’s always on the edge now, so desperately close to just shutting her eyes and jumping off just to see where she lands.

“I’m sure your daughter’s glad you feel that way,” she says, pleased with the up-down pitch of her voice. It takes on a life of its own sometimes when she’s feeling this way, and she’s not always sure how a threat will sound when it hits the air. “Such a shame your beloved Xena probably doesn’t share the sentiment. But then again, I suppose that’s what happens when you murder someone’s son and then condemn them to the same fate.”

Gabrielle cries out, fire flashing behind her eyes. Callisto beams at the sight, watches the heat in her as she lurches forward to grab at the knife. Her knuckles are white when she catches it, but the rest of her is flushed with rage, the blaze inside her almost blinding. Callisto drinks it in, reminded of a different kind of fire, the kind that was more destructive than some silly blonde bard could ever be.

“Stop it!” Gabrielle shouts. “Just _stop_.”

She’s not moving. The knife shakes a little in her hand, and Callisto can see that her palms are sweaty; little things like that give her away, and Callisto doesn’t bother to hide her frustration. It’s like it took every ounce of strength she had just to grab the knife and keep it in her hand. She doesn’t have enough left to try and use the thing, even against Callisto.

Callisto wants nothing more than to see her try, to laugh as the blade slices through her and does no damage, to tease and taunt and mock the girl until she tries again and again and again. She wants to feel it slip between her ribs, even knowing that there’s nothing there. She wants to remember how it feels to be stabbed, to be hated, to be someone’s worst nightmare. This emptiness, this equality, this thing where Gabrielle is talking to her like they aren’t a thousand worlds apart… it makes her want to tear the girl limb from limb. She wants one of them to hurt, to scream, to _bleed_.

“Why should I?” she demands. “It’s the truth, isn’t it? You’re the reason Solan’s dead, and you’re the reason Xena will die too come tomorrow. You were too much of a coward to kill your daughter when you had the chance, and you’re too much of a coward to do it again now. You’re _pathetic_.”

Gabrielle lunges at her, the knife’s blade catching the moonlight as it arcs, but she stops herself before she can close the space, before she can actually make a try for her. Predictable, and so very disappointing.

“No,” she chokes out. “I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s not going to work.”

“Do you?” Callisto asks, smiling like ice. “Do you _really_?”

“You’re trying to make me angry.” She says it without any of the passion that trembled in her a moment ago; as though struck by something even Callisto can’t see, she’s inching her way back to the numb, hollow shadow she was when this started. “You want me to attack you.”

Callisto chuckles. “And why, pray tell, would I want that?”

The answer is obvious, at least in her mind, but she should have known better than to expect that precocious little Gabrielle would ever look beyond her own feelings to seek out someone else’s. She should have learned this by now; Gabrielle has been fed with Xena’s affections for years now, and that’s not even factoring in her already oversized ego. The girl has learned by repeated experience that she’s the very centre of the universe, and Callisto shouldn’t be the least bit surprised when she seeks the answer inside herself instead of out in the real world.

“You like torturing me,” she says.

“True as that is,” Callisto says, sharpening her teeth against her tongue, “I wouldn’t waste my time on it if that were the only reason. Immortality might be a bore, my dear, but so are you.”

Gabrielle recoils a little. No surprise that she doesn’t appreciate that. “So what is it, then?”

Callisto doesn’t answer. Not by speaking, anyway. She responds by _doing_ , like she so often does, by grabbing Gabrielle’s slender little wrist and pulling her in as close as she can get, dragging her right through the juvenile idea of ‘personal space’ until their bodies are all but pressed up against each other. It’s not really Gabrielle’s body she’s interested in — she had more than her fill of that with Hope — but the suddenness and the weight of contact throws her off-balance and that’s a fun little side effect she thoroughly enjoys.

She can feel Gabrielle’s pulse quickening under her fingers, racing and tripping over itself, much like she does on her feet. She might not be afraid of Callisto any more, but apparently old habits die hard. Her body gives her away again, just like it always has.

“Here,” Callisto says, wrenching Gabrielle’s arm until it twists, until the knife turns in her hand. The drop of blood is still there on the surface, darkening the steel as it dries, and Callisto brings it to her own throat, moving it by moving Gabrielle’s wrist, tugging and twisting and pulling until the blade is flush against her skin. “Do it.”

“You’re a god,” Gabrielle points out, voice high and small. “It wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Wouldn’t you say that’s all the more reason to do it?” Callisto asks, quite seriously. “No consequences, no ugly blood staining those delicate, pretty little hands of yours. A little revenge fantasy, if you will.”

“I don’t want that,” Gabrielle whispers. Her pulse is hammering against Callisto’s fingers, like nails on a cross. “I’d never willingly hurt another person. Not even _you_. Not even if I knew it wouldn’t work.”

Callisto rolls her eyes. Predictable, predictable, predictable; she wasn’t exaggerating when she said Gabrielle is as tedious as immortality.

She brings up her other hand, pushing down on Gabrielle’s knuckles, forcing her fingers to tighten around the handle of the knife, drawing it in closer and closer as she moves. She brings it to the curve of her throat, the point sharp against the skin, and then keeps going, keeps pushing, keeps driving it in.

Gabrielle’s muscles lock, horror and panic overriding the need to resist, but of course Callisto ignores her. She pushes it further, slices the blade across her neck, closer and closer until it slips beneath the skin. If she were still mortal, it would have slit her throat completely, blood pouring everywhere, but as a god it doesn’t even tickle.

Regaining some semblance of self, Gabrielle starts to struggle, pulling away with her whole body and trying to wrench her hands free, but for all her maturity she’s still only a girl and Callisto is a god. There’s no question which of the two of them has the superior strength, and she lets her know it, squeezing hard enough to hurt and refusing to let go.

“You see?” she croons. “Everything’s so _boring_ when you’re immortal.”

“Don’t,” Gabrielle chokes. “There’s no point to this, Callisto.”

“That’s what you think,” Callisto says, and her sweet playful smile vanishes like wheat in a flood. In a flash she’s vicious again, and very violent; she’s a living, breathing threat, and she wants Gabrielle to feel it in every part of her. “But then, you’ve always been a self-obsessed little thing, haven’t you? _‘Xena will come for me’_ and _‘that was my husband you just gutted’_ and whatever else. Never mind that he was the one with the sword in his stomach. Never mind that she might have had better things to do than run around saving you every five seconds. No, no, no. It’s all about _your_ pain, isn’t it?”

Gabrielle shakes her head. “Stop it,” she says, but she’s not resisting or struggling any more, and when Callisto brings the knife a little lower, gliding the edge over her own collarbones, Gabrielle’s hand goes along with it in a kind of surrender. “Stop…”

“No.” She sighs, feeling suddenly heavy. “For once, Gabrielle, it’s not about you.”

She drags the knife across the bone, zigzagging over and then under, carving through the flesh like cows at a meat market. Gabrielle turns white as a sheet; she looks like she’s about to faint, more or less proving Callisto’s point about her weakness, but she reins in the impulse seemingly by sheer stubbornness, and composes herself after a brief struggle.

“What is it, then?” she whispers. “By the gods, just tell me.”

Callisto rolls her eyes, and finally lets Gabrielle break free. The knife clatters to the ground between them, falling from her numb fingers. Callisto watches it drop, thinking of all the ways she could stop it mid-air and turn it back on either one of them. It’s still mostly clean, only stained a little with Gabrielle’s blood, the little pinprick from before; Callisto wonders how much darker, how much prettier it would look mixed with her own. She can’t bleed in her present state, of course, but a part of her wishes she could. She hopes the hind’s blood dagger will draw some before it kills her, just so she can remember what it looks like.

“All right,” she says at last, lifting her eyes to look at Gabrielle again. She’s still pale, but a little more like herself now, the courage flooding back to her face with the loss of the knife. “We both know why I’m here, and it’s not because I care what your twisted little offspring does to the world. She can usher in a brave new era filled with genocidal Gabrielle lookalikes for all the difference it would make to me.”

“I know,” Gabrielle says quietly. Callisto ponders reading her mind, just to see if she’s picturing that particular outcome. “You’re here for yourself.”

“I’m here for _oblivion_ ,” Callisto corrects sharply. It’s so typical of the girl to make everything simple, to turn it all into a question of ego, like the whole world is as self-obsessed as she is. “I’m here to _die_. That’s all I want, and all I care about. Are we clear on that?”

Gabrielle thins her lips. “My mistake,” she mutters, thick with sarcasm.

“Good,” Callisto says, ignoring the tone. “Now. Between you and me, it really doesn’t matter whether or not Xena intends to uphold her end of our little bargain. We both know she’ll be dead before she gets the chance to do much of anything. Hope will kill her, or she’ll kill Hope and Ares will call in the Fates; either way, she’s a goner. That’s your doing, by the way…”

“I know,” Gabrielle says again. She’s starting to sound hollow again, so close to breaking. Callisto can almost taste the defeat in her. “You don’t have to keep reminding me.”

“Oh, but I think I do.” She tries to sneer, but can’t seem to control her face. Strange. “You see, I know you, Gabrielle. You might be a worthless, boot-licking coward, but you’re burdened with _kindness_. You’ll do whatever it takes to honour a deal made in good faith. Even one like this. You’d never be so cold and heartless as to leave me to suffer an eternity down here, now, would you?”

 _Besides,_ she thinks, letting the idea wring out the ghost of a smile, _whatever you might say, we both know you’d give your right arm to watch me die by your hand at last._

Gabrielle, unexpectedly, catches on fast. “Oh,” she says.

“My, aren’t you erudite?” Callisto quips, rather tartly. “I can see why everyone says you’re such a talented bard.”

Gabrielle rolls her eyes, but doesn’t rise to the bait. “You want me to kill you,” she says. “If Xena can’t.”

“ _When_ Xena can’t,” Callisto corrects, the amendment coming out of sheer spite. “Because she’s going to die. Killing your daughter. Because you can’t do the job yourself. Oh, but I forget: you don’t need me to remind of that.” She lifts the knife, studies it for a beat or two, then slips the tip into her mouth, licking the drop of blood from its surface. “Maybe _you_ can remind _me_ , then, why in the world she keeps you around. Seems to me you’re nothing but trouble. What does she see in you, I wonder…”

All of a sudden, Gabrielle is blinking very hard. _Go on,_ Callisto thinks. _Cry, little girl. Show me just how much of a weak, pathetic coward you really are._

“I don’t know,” Gabrielle manages at last. She doesn’t cry, sadly, but she does whimper a little. Close enough, if not as satisfying as the tears would be. “I really don’t.”

“Well, that makes two of us,” Callisto says, with false cheer. She draws the knife out of her mouth, slow and seductive, then hands it over. “Not that it’ll matter either way after tomorrow. She’ll be free of you, and you’ll be stuck wandering the world with only the weight of your guilt for company.” She runs her tongue over her lips, shivering at the thought. “Isn’t that a _delightful_ image?”

Gabrielle closes her eyes. She’s shaking, but still trying so hard to be brave. “It’s not going to work,” she says. “You can’t antagonise me into killing you.”

“Such a tragedy,” Callisto sighs. “But I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. You’re too much of a coward to save your beloved Xena by killing that thing you call a daughter. What chance do you have with little old me?”

She knows that will hurt. She wants it to. She wants Gabrielle to regret everything she’s ever done, every breath she ever took and every choice she ever made; she wants her to regret everything that’s ever happened in her life, absolutely everything, until she thinks back once more to their first meeting and prays for her precious pantheon to turn back time and end her life right then and there.

Callisto certainly doesn’t regret not killing Gabrielle back then. Why would she, when she’s had so much fun tormenting her since? It’s the gift that keeps on giving, the look on Gabrielle’s face when Xena isn’t there, when it’s just the two of them and Callisto is teasing and taunting and mocking her, poking at the parts of her that lie awake at night. Gabrielle is so easy to wound, so easy to influence; sometimes Callisto finds herself wondering if she enjoys torturing the little blonde almost more than she enjoys goading Xena.

“You’re right,” Gabrielle says at last, voice barely a breath. She’s blinking down at the knife, blank and numb, like she’s not really sure what it is. “I should be the one to kill Hope. If I can find the strength to do that, Xena won’t have to…”

She trails off, unable to finish. Callisto laughs. “Well, then, aren’t you lucky you’ve got me around?” she says. “I taught you to kill before, remember? I could do it again, if you like.”

She watches the memory flood Gabrielle’s face, the vision of Callisto in Xena’s body, horror and disgust and resentment twisting into a full-body shudder. Callisto knows that it still makes her physically sick just thinking about it, all the heartfelt little intimacies she shared with the woman she hates most in the world, thinking the whole time that it was her beloved Xena. Oh, how Callisto simply adored that, playing the role of warrior princess, wondering which one of them would feel the greatest pain when it was all over.

She’s not in Xena’s body now, though, and she knows that the difference is a palpable, physical thing. Gabrielle let herself be guided and manipulated the last time because she thought it was her precious Xena pushing the buttons; it’s so easy to trick someone when they already trust you. It’s a very different story now, knowing exactly who she is and why she’s offering.

“I don’t need any lessons from you,” Gabrielle says at last.

She doesn’t sound convinced, though, and Callisto leaps on that like a dog rolling through dung. “Oh, but I think you do,” she purrs. “If not for your own sake, what about Xena’s? Don’t you want to be strong enough to save her from her fate? Don’t you think that’s worth putting aside your petty little pride?” She lets that sit for a moment, then leans in close to deliver the _coup de grâce_. “Don’t you think you should be the one to destroy the evil that you brought into the world?”

Gabrielle bites her lip, brutally hard. “I didn’t do it by choice.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Callisto says, pouting with mock-pity. “And I’m sure that’s a great source of comfort to dear departed Solan. And to his suffering, grieving mother, of course.”

Gabrielle howls at that, lashing out with the hilt of the knife almost without thought. It catches Callisto right in the chest, just like her staff did so long ago when Callisto was hiding behind Xena’s breastplate, when the foolish little girl had no idea it really was her enemy she was striking.

The moment doesn’t last, of course. Visibly horrified, Gabrielle lurches back almost instantly, almost before the contact is fully realised. Callisto can read the apology already half-formed on her lips, and she surges forward to stop it before it comes out.

“No,” she says, sharp and hard. She claps one hand over Gabrielle’s mouth, and grabs her wrist with the other. “No, not like that. That part’s for holding, you idiot, not for hitting. You think you’re going to kill your demi-god daughter with a blunt weapon?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, squeezing Gabrielle’s wrist until she feels it starting to bruise under her fingers. “Do it _properly_. Do it like you _mean it_.”

Gabrielle shakes her head. Callisto squeezes her wrist again, then twists until the knife turns in her hand, until the blade is facing out instead. She leans in, slowly but intimately, holding Gabrielle and the knife in place with her god’s strength and pressing herself forward and forward and _forward_ , until the point of the blade finds her chest, until it pierces the flesh, or the god-stuff that used to be flesh, until it pushes right through and sinks in deep, until it’s buried all the way to the hilt.

Horrified, Gabrielle tries to let the thing go, but Callisto uses both hands to hold her fast, to force her fingers back around the handle. “More,” she hisses, thrusting out her chest, the thick skin and thin armour. “ _More_.”

Gabrielle has no choice. Callisto doesn’t look particularly strong, but even when she was mortal she had the talent to fight Xena to a stalemate; now, immortal and essentially all-powerful, she could hold Gabrielle in place quite comfortably with just the strength of her thoughts. She uses her hand, though, because it feels so deliciously intimate to do it like this, skin on skin, feeling the sweat turning slick between them, the horror thrumming like a second heartbeat under Gabrielle’s skin, the panic and pain screaming like a song in her nerves.

It’s glorious. Intoxicating. _Fear_ , not of Callisto, but of herself and what she’s capable of.

“Just like this,” Callisto tells her, holding her fast and pushing the knife in deeper. It’s Gabrielle who moans, a sick little sound, like she’s the one in pain. “When you get that hind’s blood dagger. You take it, and you shove it straight through my… _her_ heart. You drive it in as deep as it’ll go, until the blood is all over your hands, and you twist it until she’s screaming for mercy. You do that, Gabrielle. When the time comes, you do it just like this.”

Gabrielle’s eyes are huge, shining with tears and grief and horror. “I can’t,” she whispers; she’s not ashamed, only terrified. “Not again. I can’t do that again.”

“Again?” Callisto quirks a brow, and lets her lips lift into a smirk. In spite of herself, she’s impressed. “So you’ve made a habit of stabbing people since the last time I tried to teach you?”

“Once was enough,” Gabrielle says. She sounds tortured, more so by this than she ever was by anything Callisto did to her. Of course, Callisto’s simply crushed. “By the gods, it was enough.”

“No,” Callisto snaps. She doesn’t know the context, but she doesn’t need to. It’s enough to know that Gabrielle is trying to back out of this. “It’s ‘enough’ when I say it is. You’re not done here, not until you do me.” She lets Gabrielle’s hands fall away, then pulls the knife out of her chest and studies it; the blade is still clean and keen, but that doesn’t stop Gabrielle blanching like it came out covered in viscera. “How do you expect to kill your own daughter when you can’t even run through the person you hate most in all the world?”

It’s a rhetorical question, and even if it wasn’t she has no interest whatsoever in hearing the answer. Callisto doesn’t care whether Gabrielle can bring herself to kill Hope or not; she just needs to make sure she can kill _her_ when the time comes, when Xena inevitably sacrifices herself to keep her friend ‘pure’, when she screams and chokes on her last worthless breath, when the Fates finally rid the world of the warrior princess and leave Gabrielle all alone with her guilt and the hind’s blood dagger. When it’s all over and Xena is just a lifeless, messy splotch on the floor, Callisto has to be sure that Gabrielle will finish what she started.

Gabrielle is staring down at her hands, looking sick, like she just shoved the knife through Callisto’s chest all on her own, like she was in control the whole time. Callisto is almost grateful that she’ll be dead when it happens for real, so she won’t have to deal with the inevitable histrionics.

“This can’t be the only way,” Gabrielle is mumbling, over and over. Lost in a kind of delirium, she seems to have all but forgotten that Callisto is there at all, much less that she’s the one driving her to do this. “There has to be another. Something else I can do. Some other way. _Something_ …”

Callisto rolls her eyes. “Yes, yes. And I’m sure if you had the rest of your life to think about it, you’d no doubt come up with a thousand alternatives, each one more bland and boring than the last. But you’re not exactly gifted with an abundance of time right now, are you, dear?” She lifts the knife, holds it out handle-first with a little space between them, letting Gabrielle choose for herself this time to take it or let it drop. “Like it or not, Gabrielle, this is happening _now_. You can drive yourself mad with _‘what if’_ after Xena and I bite the big one. I’m sure you’ll have the time of your life, drawing up diagrams and writing epic poems and all sorts of bardic nonsense.”

Gabrielle doesn’t argue. That’s another disappointment. She used to be so full of arrogance and attitude; now she’s a broken shell of a thing who just takes it. Such a waste.

“All right,” she sighs. “You’ve made your point.”

“I should hope so,” Callisto shoots back. She smiles sweetly, and waves the knife a little to get Gabrielle’s attention back where it belongs. “So shall we get on with it, then? I’m sure you’ll agree, the last thing either of us wants is for darling Xena to come back and catch us in such a _compromising_ position…”

Gabrielle darts a glance into the bushes, then shakes her head as though shaking off the thought, and turns to gaze up at the sky instead. The moon seems much brighter in her eyes than it does up there; Callisto thinks briefly about gouging them out of her head, making sure she never sees another moon or sky again. It would serve the little goody-goody right.

Of course she doesn’t actually do it. A fantasy is one thing, but down here in the real world it would just be impractical; she can hardly expect the poor girl to run her through with the hind’s blood dagger if she can’t see where she’s standing, now, can she? Besides, she might not want Gabrielle to see the night sky or anything else that she holds dear, but she definitely wants her to see the moment her daughter dies, and the moment her beloved Xena does too. She wants her to see everything that hurts, and to know that it’s all her fault.

It seems to take an eternity — and Callisto certainly knows what that feels like; she’s stuck with one, after all — but at long last Gabrielle takes the knife. She holds it in front of her like a snake, like something coiled up and venomous, like she’s just waiting for it to turn around and bite her instead.

The image is an entertaining one, but of course Callisto wouldn’t let it happen. As much fun as it would be to watch the silly girl scream and gurgle herself to death with the knife latched onto her neck like some kind of vampire creature, she has no intention of letting her take the easy way out until she’s gotten what she wants. _Me first,_ she thinks selfishly. _Then you can die however you like._

“Come on,” she says. She leans back a little, giving Gabrielle a clear view of her body, and reaches up to caress her own shoulder. It’s perhaps a little more seductive than Gabrielle will be comfortable with, and of course that’s completely intentional. “Start right here. Drive it in as deep as you can, until you’re through the bone, then pull…” She traces a long languorous line down to her cleavage, to the beating heart beneath. “…all the way down to _here_. Nice and slow, now. Make it hurt.”

“I don’t…” Gabrielle swallows. “Do you have to be so _graphic_?”

Callisto snorts. “Just do it.”

She knows that she won’t. Gabrielle’s pale, stricken face gives her away. She’s staring at Callisto’s chest, following the imaginary line with her eyes, and the longer she stares the wider they get, until it’s almost comical. Stupid little girl; she can call herself a warrior-in-training all she wants, but anyone who’s ever met her can see that she doesn’t have the stomach for it. A warrior needs a killer instinct; Callisto and Xena both have it, but Gabrielle is too soft, too sweet. She’s too close to all those things that Callisto lost that day in Cirra. She’s a lost cause, and this is a waste of time.

The thought makes her furious, drives away what meagre control she might have held over her temper. Her patience snaps, her dignity along with it, and she lurches forward again. She doesn’t grab for the knife this time, or for Gabrielle’s hand or wrist; this time she goes straight for the throat. She grips her there with one hand, hard enough to kick-start her panic reflex, and squeezes either side of her pulse-point until Gabrielle lets out a strangled cry. It hurts a lot, she knows. That’s the point. If the girl won’t inflict the pain, then she’ll feel it herself.

“I said _do it_!” Callisto snarls, a rattlesnake’s hiss. “Kill me!”

“Or you’ll kill me instead?” Gabrielle counters. Her voice is choked and ragged, but only because of Callisto’s squeezing fingers; she’s not afraid at all. Callisto hates that, and she tightens her grip out of spite. “I don’t think you will.”

“I don’t need to kill you,” Callisto says. “Funny thing about being a god, Gabrielle: you learn a lot about how mortal bodies work. All I need to do is make you wish I would.”

She punctuates the point by shifting her hand ever so slightly; the pressure eases but the pain increases, a trick of the nerves that she’s long since perfected. Gabrielle lets out another gasp, but she doesn’t try to pull away. Callisto knows how much it has to hurt — she knows her talents and her strength, and everyone this side of Thrace knows Gabrielle’s weakness — but she holds herself still seemingly by pure force of will. It’s like she’s the one goading Callisto, encouraging her to push harder, to make it hurt more, like she wants to see how much she herself can take. It’s a strange, familiar sort of thing, and if Callisto didn’t know better, she’d swear she was daring her to…

 _Well_. Callisto knows a death wish when she sees one. She knows it better than anyone. And what an exotic, exciting colour it is on innocent little Gabrielle.

“My, my.” She laughs out loud. “Aren’t _we_ morbid today?”

Gabrielle closes her eyes. Callisto feels her breath, quick and shallow, struggling against her fingers, clawing its way out of her throat. The knife comes up, moving slowly, until the edge rests over Callisto’s knuckles. It’s keen and sharp; the right amount of pressure, and Gabrielle could cut straight through the bone.

She knows she won’t do it, of course, but still she lets herself hope.

The moment draws itself out longer than she expects. When Gabrielle opens her eyes again, there’s something burning behind them, a strange smoky thing that even Callisto doesn’t really recognise. It’s like grief, like pain, like so many of those darker emotions that Callisto has pushed down inside and forced herself to forget. The sight of them in Gabrielle, so close to the sweet young girl Callisto might have been if her life had turned out differently, cuts far more deeply than any knife or dagger ever could. A blade can’t cut through immortal flesh without hind’s blood, but emotion can cut anyone down to size in the space of a breath.

This time, Callisto is the one who pulls away. “We have something in common,” she says, very quietly.

It speaks volumes that Gabrielle doesn’t try to argue. “We’ve both done terrible things,” she whispers, like a kind of confession. She doesn’t bring the knife back down, even after Callisto takes her hand back. “And we both wish we’d died years ago.”

“Poor little bard,” Callisto coos. It’s very difficult to feel sorry for someone like Gabrielle, someone who only knows a shrouded, sheltered version of what real suffering is. “All that goodness getting to be a burden?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Gabrielle says. She’s numb again, lost and vacant and wholly empty. “I don’t think there’s very much left of it.”

The knife twitches in her hand, ever so slightly. It’s still hovering in the space between them, as though she doesn’t even realise Callisto’s hand is gone. With nothing there to press against, it looks like she’s thinking of cutting her own throat, like all this talk of death really has wormed its way under her skin. It’s a fun image, and one that makes Callisto want to laugh; it makes her want to lean in, too, to cover Gabrielle’s hands with her own and push down, test to see what would happen if she inched the knife a little closer, a little nearer, a little…

To her surprise, Gabrielle does it for her.

It happens in the blink of an eye, almost too fast even for Callisto’s godly reflexes to catch. All of a sudden, the knife is right _there_ , flush against her throat, the place still marked by Callisto’s fingerprints. Her eyes are closed again, and her heart is pounding visibly against the curve of the blade. It’s a good thing gods don’t need air, because Callisto is pretty sure her breath would have stopped in her chest at the sight and the sudden wave of feeling that surges up in her. It’s not empathy, exactly, but it’s definitely something.

 _Anger_ , she decides, and snatches the knife away before Gabrielle can do something stupid.

“Oh no you don’t,” she says. Gabrielle blinks up at her, no doubt surprised by the apparent compassion. Callisto shrugs off the idea with a snap of her teeth. “You can do whatever you want to yourself after this is over, but you don’t get to check out until I get my oblivion. Do you understand?”

Gabrielle has a very sad, strange look on her face. “I think I do,” she says, and Callisto gets the distinct impression it’s more than just an answer to the question.

“Good.” She hands back the knife, making sure to keep the tip pointed away from Gabrielle’s pretty little neck. “Now try again. Right here…”

Gabrielle holds it for about a second, staring at Callisto’s collarbones with that same strange look on her face. She holds still like that for a moment, staring and thinking and being typically obtuse, and then it’s over, the strength and the courage bleeding out of her as she lets go and drops the knife.

It’s a strange, terrible moment, everything happening in slow motion, but Gabrielle doesn’t seem to notice. There’s something like hopelessness, like defeat on her face as the knife begins to fall, and there’s a kind of lifelessness in her expression as she watches the blade slip between her fingers.

Callisto can’t tell if it cuts her or not, but she doesn’t smell blood. The disappointment on Gabrielle’s face tells her she was lucky. _Silly girl_ , she thinks, and wonders what Xena would say if she came back and found her precious little Gabrielle with blood all over her hands.

“No,” Gabrielle says, shattering the silence and the moment like a hammer on glass. “ _No_ , Callisto. I’m not going to stab you. Not with Xena’s knife, and not with the hind’s blood dagger either. I’ll find another way to end this.”

“Well, isn’t that adorable,” Callisto coos. “Such faith. Such _delusion_.”

She looks down at the knife, glinting under the moonlight, clean and beautiful in spite of everything it’s been put through. The same can’t be said for either of them, of course, but Callisto takes some comfort in knowing that she’s not the only one with sin under her skin. Not this time. Perhaps not ever again. If she is doomed to live out her torturous eternity like this, at least she’ll have the bard for company.

“Call it what you want,” Gabrielle says. She’s still staring at the knife, like it’s a symbol of every terrible thing that’s ever happened to her. Callisto is disappointed; once upon a time, that honour was hers. “But you’ll see. Whatever happens tomorrow, I won’t let Xena die for my mistakes. I _won’t_.”

She doesn’t give Callisto a chance to counter that, or even to really react at all. She’s up on her feet before the words are fully out of her mouth, turning tail and running away like the pathetic, worthless coward she is.

Callisto watches her go, and lets a small slow smile spread across her lips. It’s a strange expression, even by her usual standards, but then again it’s a strange feeling that rises with it. It’s a brief thing, fleeting and unexpected, but it’s so opposed to everything she expects to feel, everything she’s ever felt before, that it runs her right through, not like a knife or a god-killing dagger, but like a sword, serrated and rusted and long.

She should be furious. She should be spiteful and vengeful, petty and petulant, all the childish feelings that usually take her when someone turns their back on her or refuses to do what she wants. She should paralyse the irritating blonde with a thought and a wave of her hand, drag her back by that flaxen hair of hers and force her to do as she’s told. She should hold her down, shove the knife into her hands and cover it with her own body. She should beat the girl, with words or her fists or the truth, until she sees that this really is the only way. She should…

She should have killed her the very first time their paths crossed. She should have made sure that Xena killed her in return. Oh, what blessed peace it would have been to just die when she had the chance.

Back then, she kept Gabrielle alive because she wanted to hurt Xena. It was far more entertaining to beat or maim or torture the girl than to kill her outright, because she knew that Xena would feel Gabrielle’s pain more keenly than her own. She thought about branding her, marking her with fire just like Xena marked that innocent young girl back in Cirra.

Of course, she never did it. Xena made sure of that. Every time Callisto caught herself thinking about it, every time she forged a plan inside her head — _right there, that’s where I’ll carve my name, it’ll be so beautiful_ — Xena would ride in on that stupid steed of hers and ruin the game. Every single time.

That’s her explanation, anyway, when anyone is stupid enough to ask why she never did Gabrielle any real harm.

The truth, though?

Well. That’s between Callisto and her oblivion, and perhaps the delicate little part of Gabrielle that compelled her, so long ago, to look at her most hated enemy and ask if she felt anything. It’s between the places in them both that shivered at that moment, the place inside Gabrielle where she wanted so desperately to understand, and the place inside Callisto that didn’t know how to respond. No-one had ever asked her that before; no-one had ever cared. Gabrielle did; she hated her more than anyone in the world, but still somehow she couldn’t quiet the part of her that wanted to feel something else.

It’s sad, really. No matter how deeply and desperately she hates her, it’s never quite enough. Callisto thinks of Xena, of Cirra, of the fires that rage in her dreams, and wonders if that’s something else they have in common.

Not that it counts for much in the end. Whatever happens tomorrow, Callisto will get her oblivion. She’ll make sure of it. With any luck, it’ll come at Xena’s hand, and Callisto will be laughing all the way down, but she won’t shed any tears if it comes another way instead. She’s not picky any more; if her death comes from Hope or Ares or anyone else, that’s just fine too. And if it comes from _Gabrielle_ … well. Callisto is no bard, but she’s always appreciated a good poetic tragedy.

Gabrielle is the one who hates her. Xena might despise her for the part she played in Solan’s death, but it’s Hope that she blames the most. When she looks at Callisto, now as much as on that fateful first day, she sees her own mistakes. When she sneers and scowls and says _“may you live forever”_ , she’s talking as much to her own guilty conscience as to the woman who uses it to torture her. There’s not a soul who’s ever met the great warrior princess who would delude themselves into thinking that her feelings about Callisto were ever about _Callisto_.

That used to infuriate her, quite honestly. Now, since her little brush with ambrosia, she finds that she doesn’t care very much at all. She just shrugs and sighs and wonders why she ever did. Immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, it’s true, and now all she wants is an end to it. Xena would prefer to live forever, tormented by her past and her endless quest for redemption; she’ll never understand how much of a freedom death can be. Not like her precious little Gabrielle.

And isn’t that just the most delicious irony? That Gabrielle is the one who understands her, the one who searches the empty places where her heart and soul used to be and knows exactly why she wants to die. Callisto saw it in her eyes as she held the knife to her own throat, the hunger and the fire and the desperate, devastating need to just _end_ , to close her eyes and never open them again.

Gabrielle understands that feeling because she wants it too. Callisto saw it in her, or perhaps they saw it in each other, kindred sinners in the hidden places. They both want the same thing; the only difference is that Callisto is not afraid.

She can’t really remember what fear feels like. She wonders what it must feel like to be Gabrielle, to have a keen sharp blade in her hand, to have at her fingertips everything she wants and still not be able to see it through. She wonders how much of a torture it must be to want her daughter to die but be too afraid to do the deed herself, to want her own end and be too afraid to do that as well. What a nightmare it must be to live inside that irritating blonde head. What a torment it must be, thinking and feeling and being like that.

Maybe she does know a thing or two about suffering, after all.

Callisto plucks up the knife from the ground. It’s smudged with dirt now, damp from the grass, and so she wipes it clean against the white of her skin, the curve of her collarbones and the arc of her chest. She lets the edge cut through the skin, a slash through flesh and bone and muscle, or what would have been those things if she were still mortal. She imagines herself bleeding, choking, _dying_ , lets herself taste the relief that would follow, pouring in to replace the life pouring out. She imagines her body, bleeding and lacerated and weakening breath by beautiful breath. She imagines the void, the nothing that waits on the other side, and she smiles.

 _Soon_ , she thinks. _One way or another, I will have my oblivion._

And who knows? Maybe there’s still time for Gabrielle to join her.

—


End file.
